Did the solar system 'bounce' finish the dinosaurs?

May 2, 2008

The sun’s movement through the Milky Way regularly sends comets hurtling into the inner solar system – coinciding with mass life extinctions on earth, a new study claims.

Scientists at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology built a computer model of our solar system’s movement and found that it “bounces” up and down through the plane of the galaxy. As we pass through the densest part of the plane, gravitational forces from the surrounding giant gas and dust clouds dislodge comets from their paths. The comets plunge into the solar system, some of them colliding with the earth.

The Cardiff team found that we pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years, increasing the chances of a comet collision tenfold. Evidence from craters on Earth also suggests we suffer more collisions approximately 36 million years. Professor William Napier, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, said: “It’s a beautiful match between what we see on the ground and what is expected from the galactic record.”

The periods of comet bombardment also coincide with mass extinctions, such as that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Our present position in the galaxy suggests we are now very close to another such period.

While the “bounce” effect may have been bad news for dinosaurs, it may also have helped life to spread. The scientists suggest the impact may have thrown debris containing micro-organisms out into space and across the universe.

Centre director Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: “This is a seminal paper which places the comet-life interaction on a firm basis, and shows a mechanism by which life can be dispersed on a galactic scale.”

The paper, by Professor Napier and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe, is to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

UK team say Deep Impact will reveal organic matter
Cardiff (UK) scientists are playing a major role in a NASA mission, which they believe could reveal living matter in the icy layers beneath the surface of a comet.
NASA's ...

There are many galaxies of different shapes and sizes around us today. Roughly half are gas-poor elliptical-shaped galaxies with little new star formation activity, and half are gas-rich spiral and irregular galaxies with ...

Recommended for you

Researchers from RIKEN and JAXA have used observations from the ALMA radio observatory located in northern Chile and managed by an international consortium including the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) to ...

Using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), astronomers have detected a new bright quasar at a redshift of about 6.8. The newly identified quasar, designated VHS J0411-0907, is the brightest object ...

Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited ...

A relic cloud of gas, orphaned after the Big Bang, has been discovered in the distant universe by astronomers using the world's most powerful optical telescope, the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii.

In their search for life in solar systems near and far, researchers have often accepted the presence of oxygen in a planet's atmosphere as the surest sign that life may be present there. A new Johns Hopkins study, however, ...

I wonder if most people think of the earth as some friendly natural place. It is a very fragile oasis in the vast sterile void of hostile space. We are sitting on a lump of rock that attracts other lumps of rock. Living nature does not control space or the earth. It is the other way around. One big volcano or meteor strike would end advanced civilization. Humans squable over the superficial and are not looking at the real threats to humanity. Sadly there would be no second chance if something dreadful did happen.

Ive heard all this before, but I was under the impression that we are roughly on the gallactic plane right now, starting back in like 1985, and that we will cross the center of the plane on the winter solstice, 2012. someone please correct me, I must be thinking of something else.

Ok, I'm not buying this. Is someone dribbling the solar system? I don't doubt that the our system passes through space that has varying amounts of matter. But I'd really like to hear an explanation of how the solar system is changing direction every 35 or so million years. Seems to me that we should be moving in a more or less straight line, affected only by gravitational influences. Perhaps 'bounce' is the wrong term to use.

...I was under the impression that we are roughly on the gallactic plane right now, starting back in like 1985, and that we will cross the center of the plane on the winter solstice, 2012. someone please correct me, I must be thinking of something else.

No bobwinners, gravity explains it quite well. The situation is somewhat akin to a pendulum, only rotated 90 degrees... the solar system passes through the plane of the galaxy after being accelerated towards it when it was further above and below it. After it passes quickly through the plane, gravity begins to pull it back towards the plane, and the bobbing motion repeats. With no medium to provide friction, the motion can consider indefinitely, with no organized dampening.

Mercury_01, no, you are indeed correct, although 2012 isn't the year of best alignment, it was actually around 1998 or so. Supposedly the Mayan's depicted this (highly controversial) - http://alignment2...isGA.htm

Now, as to what the actual significance of this is... well, that's lost on me. Astrology and science aren't the best of friends :P

"New" news my foot...Are you familiar with the "Farcash-Cretzu" theory? These two romanian scientist developed this theory many years ago, so IS NOT NEW!..Basic ideas:the plane of the galaxy is "wabbleing" like a "precessional" Earth's plane, every 32.5...35 million years, the entire solar system is "disrupted"(from gravity point of wiew), so..then the asteroids and comets are more and more displaced...If you look at the periods of the great extinctions in Earth's history, you will notice that every 32.5 or 65 millions years we have a bombardament on our planet(Yucatan peninsula from Mexico was hit 65 mill. years ago...and bye-bye big dinosaurs!)...A simple mathematical calculation...65 65 65=almost 200 million years, wich, by the way, is the "galaxy" year...time for a full, single rotation of the solar (eliptical...that is why..)system around the galaxy!...Get it?...#2.5 mill. years of "near miss", and then ...BOOM!"..one cold, one hot...

..upps..my mistake..i tiped #2.5 instead of 32.5...By the way...is any connection between the 3 branches/arms of our galaxy and the 3 periods of 65 million years ? The coincidence is too much!..P.S.:"Itzaru"..are you romanian?

Ive heard all this before, but I was under the impression that we are roughly on the gallactic plane right now, starting back in like 1985, and that we will cross the center of the plane on the winter solstice, 2012. someone please correct me, I must be thinking of something else.

And then the rapture occurs as it does every 33M years where God feasts on the souls of the living to sustain his own vampiric form.

We passed the galactic plane about 3M years ago. Nu'tin much happened. All prophetic "doom" prophecies are now null and void, go back to school/work.